After how poorly last season went for the Boston Celtics, along with a free agency decision that generated as much angst as any in recent years, Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving has been cast as a villainous character despite the testimonies of former teammates coming to the mercurial star’s defense.
Of Irving’s many supporters in the league, two voices that have consistently sided with him have been in Boston long enough to be considered part of franchise lore.
Though there are certainly a couple of his former teammates who still seem to hold a grudge against him, Celtics guard Marcus Smart and team president Danny Ainge have went against the grain, opting to take a more holistic approach when analyzing the crux of Boston’s problem last season.
Even recently, as Ainge sat down with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols on Tuesday and discussed Irving’s departure, as well as revealing that he believes he was ultimately at fault for Boston’s woes last season.
“Kyrie for his first year and half was terrific for us,” says Ainge, “and I really was hopeful that it was going to be a good marriage going forward. But he really wanted to go home and that’s his choice.”
Still, while Irving was undeniably a catalyst for the divisiveness and tension in the team’s locker room, Ainge says that he “[doesn’t] know why he gets all the blame.”
"I do think it was my fault."
1-on-1 with Danny Ainge on what went wrong last year with Kyrie, how the front office pivoted to find an even better fit in Kemba Walker, and how his time with Larry Bird & Kevin McHale affected his reaction to Gordon Hayward's latest injury. pic.twitter.com/uw3gz5viVx— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) November 26, 2019
“I’m the one who should be blamed for last year,” Ainge muses. “We put a team together that just didn’t have the pieces that fit. We had a lot of talent, a lot of expectations but it’s certainly not Kyrie’s fault.”
Pressed by Nichols, Ainge doubled-down on his surprising admission of guilt:
“I do think it was my fault. I think that in hindsight we should have cleaned out the roster a little bit to make it easier for [Celtics head coach] Brad [Stevens].
We had a deep roster [and] we were built for a longer run but we had a lot of young guys that had a lot of success without Gordon [Hayward] and Kyrie. The guys that had success without those two guys felt like it was their time for the spotlight and it just didn’t mesh.”
Whether that means Ainge should have moved Terry Rozier, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Gordon Hayward or some combination of the four is unknown but the Celtics were definitely prepared to be spearheaded by Kyrie, and were reportedly ready to offer him a contract extension last fall.
With those players, acquiring Kawhi Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs or Anthony Davis from the New Orleans Pelicans would have been possible though they may have been better decisions for the short-term than long-term. Maybe.
That said, there’s little doubt that the multitude of individual goals was a major factor in the team’s locker room issues, or that the rise of Tatum, Brown and Rozier made it difficult for them to mesh with Irving and Hayward.
Not necessarily because there were too many mouths to feed on the court but because of the position overlaps between pairs like Irving and Rozier along with Brown and Hayward.
This season, Boston has been able to play Brown, Tatum and Hayward together in the starting lineup (alongside Kemba Walker) but Brown and Hayward haven’t spent much time on the court together due to injury.
That Walker is more passive as a scorer than Irving will likely ever be also aids the group in fitting together.
Ainge isn’t directly responsible for Irving’s self-serving statements, Rozier and Hayward’s often mediocre performances, or any of the other issues that emerged but he’s the one that shapes the roster. Last season, he failed to put a team together that clicked on or off the court.
His decisions have the largest impact on the team’s season and, as a result, he is at fault for how terrible of a season it was for Boston. However, like the players and coaches he’s defended, he’s not solely at fault either.